Article summary with Promoting self-regulation in young children: The role of parenting interventions by Morawska a.o. - 2019

What is self-regulation?

Self-regulation is the capacity to guide one´s own goal-directed activities over time and across changing circumstances. It involves using cognitive processes to regulate behavior and emotional responses. It includes multiple distinct and overlapping mechanisms, such as effortful control, emotion management, focusing and shifting attention, and inhibiting and activating behavior. 

How does self-regulation develop during early childhood?

Between twelve and eighteen months children become capable of self-control. From then on, self-regulation develops exponentially, with rapid non-linear growth in the preschool years. Early self-regulatory processes provide a basis for a continually evolving framework. More advanced self-regulatory processes build on mechanisms that have developed earlier, and gradually create more sophisticated behavior as children mature. Well developed self-control in early childhood predicts positive outcomes later in life, including better health and academic outcomes.

Which factors influence the development of self-regulation?

Many factors are capable of influencing the development of self-regulation, such as temperament, genetics, and the general environment in which the child is growing up. Especially important are parental factors. Parenting is a key social mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of self-regulation. It can help children whose temperament or genetics are not in favor of healthy self-regulation development. Positive parenting strategies are associated with better child self-regulation, whereas negative parenting strategies are associated with weaker child self-regulation. Also, parental modeling of self-regulatory skills influences children´s self-regulatory skills.

Which parenting interventions can be used in infancy to promote early child self-regulation?

The difficulty with identifying specific interventions that promote early child self-regulation is that parenting interventions are generally not targeted at self-regulation skills specifically. However, some self-regulatory outcomes have been measured:

• An intervention targeting responsive caregiving for infants in foster care resulted in better infant biological self-regulatory skills and better executive functioning.
• Interventions targeting parents of premature infants focusing on early parenting skills resulted in enhanced toddler emotion regulation in stressful situations.
• Skin-to-skin contact between mother and infants improve self-regulatory skills in preterm infants.
• Interventions targeting the co-parenting relationship at the transition to parenthood led to improvements in one-year-old infants´ observed self-soothing behavior.

How can parents in the toddler and preschool period promote early child self-regulation?

Parent involvement, positive and proactive guidance, and low negativity are important in supporting young children´s self-regulation in de toddler and preschool period. Parents of preschool-age children can have a positive effect on self-regulation skills. Research has uncovered the following results:

• Positive associations between parent´s use of positive control and negative associations for parent´s negative control with children´s self-regulation.
• Parental guidance and limit setting that is provided in a positive and non-intrusive manner are parenting skills that support self-regulation in young children.
• Positive behavior management led to improvement in effortful control of preschool-age children with behavioral problems.

What are the effects of parenting interventions on child self-regulation among young school-aged children?

There have not been studies done to examine this link. However, some trials of multi-component programs that include a focus on parenting interventions suggest that such programs can improve child self-regulation skills (for example by practicing staying on-task, completing tasks, expressing and managing negative emotions appropriately). One research found that effects of the Fast Track program indicated that the important preventative effects of the intervention aimed at reducing delinquency and arrests in adolescence and early adulthood were mediated by growth in emotional and behavioral self-regulation skills and social competence during childhood.